THE THEATR.E MUCH ADO IN MESSINA Star turns zn a Shakespeare comedy. BY HILTON AL5 T he idiosyncratic, perpetually boy- ish, and unequivocally American actor Sam Waterston is giving the per- formance of his career as the alternately loving, baffled, and furious patriarch Leonato in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" (at the Delacorte The- atre, in Central Park). The governor of Messina, on the island of Sicily, Leo- nato is also the father of Hero (played by Waters ton's own daughter, the lovely Elisabeth Waterston) and the guardian of Beatrice, his niece (Kristen Johnston). At first, Leonato is the most genial fa- ther figure imaginable. He's as im- pressed and un threatened by Beatrice, with her verbal dexterity and her disdain for the less fair sex, as he is by his more magnanimous daughter, who has the ability to calm her cousin's blustery na- ture. More often than not, Leonato is amused by the way Hero plays the femme to Beatrice's butch. But when, in Act I his faith in his daughter is shaken-Hero's intended, Claudio (Lorenzo Pisoni), accuses her of infidelity just moments before they're to be married-Leonato's love turns to cold gray ash Waters ton skillfully lets us see the embers burning beneath. Look- ing directly at Hero, who is dressed in virginal confectio nary white, Leo- nato sees nothing but black. "But mine, and mine J loved, and mine I praised," he gasps, barely pausing for breath. '1\nd mine that J was proud on; mine so much I That I myself was to myself not mine, I Valuing of her-why she, o she is fallen I Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea I Hath drops too few to wash her clean again, I And salt too little which may season give I To her foul, tainted flesh." It's a nightmarish mo- ment, and it is almost unbearable to watch this Lear-like wrath fall on its passive, defenseless victim (Hero has fainted before the speech begins). But Waterston also lends pathos to Leonato's disgust-one's heart breaks as he flings 90 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 26,2004 invective-transforming Shakespeare's rage into an aria about the shattering of a dream. Leonato's dream, as Waterston presents it, was twofold. For him, Hero's wedding was a guarantee of a happy fu- ture for his daughter, one in which she would be loved and protected. It was proo too, that he had succeeded as a father, that his daughter had matured into a caring, ethical being. Now that her double nature has been exposed- wrongly; of course-how can Leonato keep his grip on everything he once held dear? Ink runs through one's fingers, as does salt water. Part of what makes Waterston's per- formance so arresting is his history as an actor in "Much Ado," one of Shake- speare's more emotionally challenging comedies. Thirty-two years ago, Water- ston played Benedick, opposite the as- tonishing Kathleen Widdoes as Beatrice, in A. J. Antoon's celebrated staging, also at the Delacorte. (The production was filmed and is now available on DVD, as part of the invaluable Broadway Theatre Archives series.) As Benedick, Claudio's friend and fellow war hero, Waterston was as thin and lyrical as a river reed: his beauty lay in the delicacy of his projec- tion and in his disarming awkwardness. He seemed to want to do anything but fight with Beatrice, which was an odd and refreshing interpretation of the role, given that Benedick and Beatrice's verbal sparring makes up the comic center of the play. In the current production, Wa- terston has not lost any of that charming hesitancy-he is a great listener when other actors take the stage-but one can see, too, how the gravitas that comes with time and experience has made him more than charming, has turned up the volume on his soul. Here, Benedick, as played by Jimmy Smits, is all bluster and testosterone-a baby with chest hair. Smits's unabashed desire to be liked-to be loved by any- one but Beatrice, at first-wins the au- dience over. His formidable comedic skills could, however, have been tem- pered a little by the director, David Es- bjornson, who treats the playas a kind of Restoration farce-transplanting it to the late nineteenth century and thus sacrificing or blurring some of Shake- speare's intricacy in favor of easy laughs and aural pratfalls. In the end, though, this confusion may be the fault not of the director, who does the best he can, but of the play; which has so many trapdoors of inten- tion and betrayal and missed opportu- nity that it's a wonder any of the ac- tors remain standing at the show's end. Among other plot twists: Claudio fought alongside Benedick under the command of Don Pedro (Peter Francis James), a prince who now serves as "Much Ado" 's matchmaker and offers to woo Hero in the bashful Claudio's stead. Don Pedro's resentful and surly bastard brother, Don John (Christopher Evan Welch), works to disrupt the courtship with rumors and staged de- ceptions-and succeeds for several acts. In a no-nonsense 1946 lecture on the play, W. H. Auden wrote, "The first thing to notice about 'Much Ado About Nothing' is that the subplot overwhelms and overshadows the main plot . . . the story of Hero and Claudio and the conspiracy of Don John. Shakespeare treats the story perfunctorily; and except for Don John, it's boring. And Shake- speare shows some carelessness in put- ting it together." As the various threads unravel, one may find one's interest drifting. Don John is spurred on in his need to destroy Hero and Claudio's love by the scorn- ful way that he has been treated by so- ciety, but how he's been wronged and why his outsider status is such a great motivating factor never become entirely clear. Don John is a fantastic Shakespear- ean villain-lago's younger brother- but he's almost too fantastic, too un- examined, to be anything more than a plot device. The audience, instead of see- ing why he does what he does, is told only what he will do next In the end, the showy disaster we've been wait- ing for does not occur. Don John's evil, which only momentarily besmirches Hero's reputation, is a relatively small, domestic one; he is not a menacing monster but a mouse trapped under the